


Coffin

by twhitesakura (twsakura)



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Slash, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twsakura/pseuds/twhitesakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sinbad was ever-present in a way that other people were in sole small bursts. When he fought, he was brilliant, an orange sun rising in the darkness. Judal could stare at him for hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffin

From his earliest memories, his life had been a strictly regimented routine. In the mornings he ate a few mouthfuls of flatbread with chickpeas and gulped down water poured by a caretaker. He combed and braided his hair himself. As it grew longer, and as Judal’s power expanded and became increasingly easier to manipulate, he forwent using his hands altogether and instead used magic to shift the plaits into place.

There were lessons, endless lessons. At first he learned to electrocute mice and birds. They were tiny frightened things, animals that stared at him with beady ignorant eyes. He imagined killing them was the same as murdering children. When Al-Thamen finally graduated him from monkeys and elephants to people, they were often the sick and infirm. These he spared from a long agony; they were on the edge of expiring already and his magoi served as an extra grain on the scales of life and death which tipped them over into death. Only the warriors who sought to challenge him provided any meaningful amount of amusement. Judal taunted them deliberately, sometimes lagging on purpose so their blades and scimitars cut his flesh, a cold metallic bite of hurt.

Sinbad was different.

Sinbad was ever-present in a way that other people were in sole small bursts. When he fought, he was brilliant, an orange sun rising in the darkness. Judal could stare at him for hours, committed in the same way that he always rose in the pre-dawn, watching day break the sky from his bedroom window, army tent, or mountain hideout. As he grew older, the Al-Thamen provided him more liberties; Judal could go missing for months on a whim, but somehow he always returned to Kou.

Kouen welcomed him brusquely at court, his sharp eyes distant, fixed on a future that he had assured Judal would mesh well with Judal’s own thirst for warfare. At night, Kouen was immediate, his unbound hair like phoenix feathers sliding across Judal’s vision until they caged him. The first prince’s tresses against the mattress were as vivid as a splash of blood in the morning; the way the sun caressed them, always with cloying love, made Judal sick to his stomach.

Even here, he would think of Sinbad. He imagined Sinbad’s face soft in unconsciousness, unguarded and sweet. He imagined skewering the Pirate King into the gold-trimmed brocade that spilled over his bed, luxurious in a way where Kouen was Spartan. What would it be like to hold him down? What would it be like if Sinbad welcomed him? Sinbad used his people and manipulated loyalty from them, cheated in a more devious way than if he had simply subjugated them with power, but he cared for his tools as well.

One night, restless, Judal crept from Kouen’s bedside and traveled to Sindria. The winds lifted him and pulled him along quickly, the black magoi slipped him, a lonesome Magi, easy to overlook, through the barriers which protected the island and into the very heart of Sinbad’s palace. The stars in this part of the world shone like cold diamonds and if Judal wanted, he could have calmed the sea and given them a mirror so they could stare at their own reflections, pleased. But it was not the sea that called to Judal, but a courtyard hidden in the middle of the place, a garden where Sinbad brought no one, neither his advisors nor his many lovers.

Judal hid in a grand peach tree, making sure the green leaves veiled the soles of his naked feet, which dangled from the branches like unripened fruit. He waited.

Sinbad came. In a long indigo night shift, his turban placed away, he came to the peach tree. He sat under it and pulled a peach from one of its lower branches and bit into the skin, gnawed at it softly until the pit was left, and this he carefully planted, as Judal watched, with his bare hands, into the soft loam of the earth where it could take root. For hours, he gazed at the cold gems of the sky and then he rose and spoke.

“Ja’far has found a new spell for the barrier,” Sinbad said, seemingly to the stars. “It will be set up tomorrow. Good night.”

Judal felt something in him tighten, his pupils contract. He snatched a fruit from the branch above him and leapt down from the arbor. Judal had never let himself be seen before. Judal silenced Sinbad’s expression, one of surprise, with a kiss.

“As payment,” Judal said, grinning. He tossed his stolen treasure into the air and the wind came for it and him and sped them away from Sindria.

In Kou, Judal roused Kouen with persuasive touches and fed the peach to him. He fed it to Kouen, who licked the juices clean off Judal's fingers, one by one. He fed it to Kouen, who skewered him nightly against the sheets. To Kouen, who wanted him, and would fight for him, and pull him from the coffin which Al-Thamen had condemned him to, by offering all the blood of the world.

Judal smiled against the tears he would never acknowledge. He would win against that barrier. He would smash it and Sindria -- and Sinbad -- to pieces. 


End file.
